Brigador Robo-Stomps Onto Early Access October 20th

Brigador [official site] is a sort’ve mech-based Syndicate, giving you contracts to carry out on isometric maps that involve a bit of stealth and then a lot of blowing things up in your selected vehicle. Graham has spent a lot of time calling it cool since mid-2014 and it’s finally getting into a playable state on October 20th. That will be an Early Access release with a full version coming in early 2016 according to the announcement post. Most importantly there’s a new trailer showing off more robot explodey-bangs.

Cor. I’m a human being between the age of eight and sixty, so giant robots and floating tanks blowing each other and their surroundings up is basically what I live for. You select between them in three categories: mechs, tanks and anti-grav vehicles, which fit broadly into offense, defense and speed. Within each of those are three sub-classes that change the way you play. One version of the mech can extend to look over buildings, for example, or has a more powerful stomp and weapons but is bigger and easier to hit. On top of that are three factions, bringing the total number of battlesuits and treaded death machines to 45.

Once you’re on-map, everything is fully destructible and mayhem is encouraged by rewarding you with money any time you successfully demolish a structure or enemy. That money is used between missions to upgrade your various abilities and unlock new playgrounds. Each of your kill-machines has two weapons and a defensive ability to manage, so there’s plenty of variety.

Loads more details and some quite pretty gifs in this NeoGAF thread. You can also directly pre-order from Stellar Jockeys’ (the developers) website for $15. It’ll bag you a Steam key for when the time comes.

For some reason, Brigador really reminded me of Fire Fight, a mid-90s blaster with sometimes non-linear levels where you fly a ship around various planets bringing them back under control of your tyrannical bosses. Here’s someone playing the first couple of missions. Obviously there’s the similar perspective, but the semi-FMV detailed art style and destructible environments were what linked the neurons in my brain. While we’re on this nostalgia train, I found Fire Fight via the Windows 95 Game Sampler 2 disc – essentially a demo for what DirectX could do which, for some reason, had its own intro cinematic and playable menu. Let’s never go back to the 90s, people.